A newly introduced bill at the Colorado State Capitol would allow LGBTQ individuals to sue for damages caused by so-called conversion therapy, or therapy aimed at changing the sexual orientation or gender identity of a person.
The practice was banned in Colorado in 2019, and the American Medical Association – among other medical and mental health organizations – has said it is ineffective and can lead to depression, anxiety, and other psychological injuries.
DENVER, CO – JANUARY 14: Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie in front of the House Gallery starts the 2026 legislative session at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver, Colorado on January 14, 2026.RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Sponsors of HB26-1322 say many of those harmed by the therapy don’t come forward for years. Their bill would eliminate the statute of limitations in cases involving conversion therapy.
Individuals could sue their therapists, facilities that hired the therapists, and anyone who knew or should have known about the therapy and didn’t take reasonable steps to stop it.
Plaintiffs could recover economic and punitive damages if they could prove that the therapy was a substantial factor in their psychological injuries.
The bill is sponsored by State Representatives Alex Valdez and Karen McCormick in the House and State Senators Lisa Cutter and Kyle Mullica in the Senate.
The House Judiciary Committee will hear the bill this Wednesday.
Jeff Tiedrich uses blue language. It’s easily ignored if you don’t care for blue language; this is some great coverage of yesterday.Also, Bluesky posts don’t embed easily on WP, so really, this is better on the page. Just click on the link directly below. It’s also mostly here, but you’ll have to click on the Bluesky posts to see the excellent photos; they didn’t embed.
over eight million of us gathered peacefully coast to coast, to rise up as one and convey a singular message: fuck you, you fucking fuck — you’re not our king.
wait, did I say coast to coast? no, it was the entire world telling Donny Convict to fuck straight off.
(just click the link to see the post on Bluesky. How it works, I guess. -A)
HAPPENING NOW: A HUGE crowd has gathered in London, England for a protest against the far right in coordination with the No Kings day protests in the US
In 1789, furious protesters stormed the Bastille in Paris. This marks the start of the French Revolution that put an end to the highly corrupt, rotten regime of aristocrats and the ultra rich. Yesterday, thousands joined a #NoKings protest at the Bastille.
“I’m so proud of you. you chased out of this state pure evil. you chased them out. you chased out the fun-size fascist Greg Bovino. you chased out that evil Kristi Noem. Kristi Noem is so evil, I’m starting to think that that dog took his own life. just couldn’t take it. ‘is this my future? I need to get out. I’m taking the goat with me.’”
while millions of people were protesting the fucked-up reign of Mad King Donny, CPAC couldn’t even fill one small room. look at this clownfuckingly pathetic display.
it’s as if Sad Trombone became a real political party.
great optics, you guys. bravo. ten out of ten — no notes.
fuck those fucking fucks. let’s go out with a bang. here are some of the best protest signs from around the country.
(Just go see it all. You’ll be sorry if you don’t!)Snip
and finally, once again, our unknown poet laureate from Ellsworth, Maine.
as for Sundowning Grandpa Bugfuck, he was unusually silent — and nowhere to be seen. there were none of his usual protest-day batshit meltdowns on the feed of his crappy app. he couldn’t even be bothered to post AI slop of himself shitting on protesters, as he did last October.
he just spent the day holed up in Motel-a-Lago. according to his official schedule, the lazy fuck didn’t even bother to cheat at golf.
I’ve got a news flash for you, Donny: America is sick of you. aside from your brain-dead cultists who are too fucking stupid to understand what’s going on, nobody voted for this shit.
nobody voted for the historic and stately East Wing to be demolished so that you can replace it with some vulgar Epstein Dance Hall™ — and speaking of your dead pedo bestie, nobody voted for the continuing cover-up of a massive pedophile ring.
nobody voted for off-the-charts corruption and greed.
nobody voted for masked ICE thugs teargassing children, and murdering anyone who looks at them funny. nobody voted for innocent immigrants to be disappeared off the streets and shipped off to far-away slave-labor gulags.
nobody voted for the price of everything continuing to skyrocket — especially when you promised bring all that shit down on Day One.
nobody voted for our allies to be insulted and ignored, or for Ukraine to be thrown to the wolves, or for Greenland to be perpetually harassed, or for Venezuela to become a vassal state.
and nobody voted for an unwinnable clusterfuck of a don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war in Iran — certainly not one that shut down the Strait of Hormuz, destabilized the entire Middle East, and sent the price crude through the roof.
guess what, Donny: you’re such a loathsome piece of shit that over eight million people took to the streets yesterday to deliver this singular message: fuck you, you fucking fuck — you’re not our king, and you never will be.
This person Same is interviewing is from the Cato Institute. Sam and David talk about the bigotry and attempt to purify the country of non-white people. tRump and his racist administration claim to want to remove 100 million from the US. There is no where near that number of undocumented people in the country. That number is almost 1/3 of the US population. Undocumented immigrants were estimated at 14 million in 2023 at the highest. So where are the rest of these people coming from? Legal documented immigrants and non-white citizens born in the US. That is why they are rounding up brown people who immigrated here legally and why they are trying so hard to end birth right citizenship. The goal has become clear and it is scary to me. To cement the white majority for as long as possible and stop the slow decline of the white majority / rize of minority demographics. Stephen Miller and the other racists in tRump administration want an apartheid state like the former South African one was. They want no rights for non-whites. They want no non-whites in positions of authority. The administration is going after businesses and higher education for not prioritizing whites over any other group. They feel no white male is less qualified than any non-white. If a non-white person scored 95 and the white person scored 75, these racists feel the white person is still more qualified because of their skin color. The racists feel the only DEI that should be allowed is the promotion of white males over everyone else. Hugs
The game plan is clear and was used to accomplish the genocide of the LGBTQ+ from society in Russia. Attack the most vulnerable and smallest members of the LGBTQ+ trans people in the name of saving the most vulnerable, who are the little children espcailly little girls / daughters. Every study proves that the ones in real danger or under threat are not the kids but the trans people. Then use the momentum and rising bigotry to remove all rights and equality from the rest of the LGBQ+ based on the same lies. End goal is to create a straight cis country where the Christian white male is making the country safe / regressive enough for their bigoted view of Jesus to feel comfortable enough to return and pat them on their heads. Hugs
The Idaho Senate has widely passed a bill that would fine local and state governments for flying flags that aren’t on the Legislature’s pre-approved list.
The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Ted Hill, an Eagle Republican, has said House Bill 561 is meant to target the city of Boise for flying an LGBTQ+ pride flag. Boise’s City Council voted to declare the pride flag and the organ donor flag as official flags, in an apparent move to work around the Legislature’s flag ban law passed last year.
The bill would add a $2,000 daily fine, per offending flag, to the flag ban law from last year, which lacked an enforcement process. The bill widely passed the House earlier this month. But since the Senate amended the bill, it must return to the House before it would go to Gov. Brad Little for final consideration.
Rep. Ted Hill [photo] appeared here yesterday for his successful bill that criminalizes using the “wrong” bathroom. Violating that law would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison. A second offense within five years would be a felony, carrying up to a five-year prison sentence.
Hill appeared here in 2024 for his successful bill banning teachers from referring to students with their preferred pronouns.
Earlier this month, the Idaho House passed a resolution to petition the US Supreme Court on overturning Obergefell.
In February, the Idaho House advanced a bill to overturn all local LGBTQ rights ordinances statewide. Thirteen Idaho cities and counties, including Boise and its home county, have such laws on the books.
Just a question to those who support this regime: Just what the hell is it going to take before reality makes it through whatever brainwashing happened to you?
and, I hope, NOT misogynist. The other Dem candidate still has some answering to do in regard to that. That being said, he’d still be better than Susan Collins.Emphasis below is mine.
On Monday, days after Republican Sen. Susan Collins voted in favor of an amendment to Trump’s SAVE Act that would ban transgender students from girls’ sports nationwide, Maine Gov. Janet Mills—who is running in a Democratic primary to unseat her—came out with a forceful statement in favor of transgender youth in sports. Mills was asked about her position on a new ballot referendum that will likely go before voters this November—which would ban transgender girls from sports, bar transgender students from bathrooms in schools across the state, and carve transgender students out of the Maine Human Rights Act in certain cases. It is Mills’ first time directly opposing the referendum, and a significant case of a Democratic candidate running for a swing seat standing up for transgender people.
“I would not support a ballot measure that demonizes children and demonizes and uses as a political ploy, as the Republicans have done, the right-wing Republicans have done, with this kind of initiative. It targets some of the most vulnerable people in our society,” Mills said at a press conference. “I brought up five daughters in Maine. They all played sports. They should all have an opportunity to play sports. My husband was a coach, a high school coach, and I saw, I always saw in the eyes of those kids, new energy, new feeling about life, a new way to engage in teamwork, to make new friends, and that’s what sports does—gives you a different perspective on life, makes you a better human being.”
Her statement was in response to a referendum from “Protect Girls Sports in Maine,” an anti-transgender organization funded by far-right Republican megadonor and billionaire Richard Uihlein, of Uline office supplies, who donated $800,000 to bankroll the signature drive. The referendum successfully collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot this November. It would define sex for school purposes as “a person’s biological status as male or female recorded at birth on the person’s original birth certificate”—a definition that would bar transgender students’ legal recognition. It would require schools to “maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms, shower rooms, and other private spaces for each sex,” going beyond sports, and would create a transgender sports ban across the state. It would also create a private right of action allowing individuals who encounter transgender students in bathrooms to sue the school that permitted their access—while carving all of these provisions out of the Maine Human Rights Act.
This is not Mills’ first foray into the fight over transgender athletes. In February 2025, Trump singled out Maine at a meeting with Republican governors, threatening to pull federal funding unless the state banned transgender girls from girls’ sports. The next day, Mills confronted Trump at the White House, telling him, “See you in court.” What followed was an unprecedented federal pressure campaign: six federal agencies launched investigations targeting the state—all over a handful of transgender athletes out of roughly 53,000 high school sports participants statewide. When Maine refused to comply, the Department of Justice sued the state in April 2025—that lawsuit is still ongoing.
Mills’ stance in support of transgender athletes is a notable position for a Democratic governor running for a purple Senate seat in an era where well-funded political pundits and organizations have aimed to push Democrats to the right on transgender issues. Her approach stands in stark contrast to that of fellow Democratic Governor California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, who has repeatedly thrown transgender people under the bus. In March 2025, Newsom told conservative activist Charlie Kirk on the debut of his podcast that trans participation in girls’ sports was “deeply unfair.” And just weeks ago, in an interview with Katie Couric, he said he could not see a way for trans women to fairly compete on women’s sports teams—while insisting he was not throwing the community under the bus. Mills, by contrast, is running toward the issue rather than away from it, and doing so in a competitive seat.
Mills, who is term-limited and cannot run for a third consecutive term as governor in 2026, is running against fellow Democrat Graham Platner for the chance to unseat Collins. Platner, for his part, has also been ardently pro-transgender rights. He opposed the referendum as early as November 2025, telling NOTUS that it “targets transgender kids and takes Maine backwards.” After Collins voted for the Tuberville amendment this weekend, Platner criticized her on social media, writing, “At a time when Mainers are dealing with rising gas prices and airport chaos, this is what she’s focused on—attacking kids and taking away your right to vote.” Of the referendum itself, Platner has said, “I think banning people from playing in sports in the gender that they see themselves as and identify as, doing that in a wholesale way, is going to be restrictive of people’s rights. So, I do not think that banning is the answer.”
The Maine Democratic primary is June 9, with the winner facing Collins in the November general election—the same ballot where voters will likely decide the fate of the anti-trans referendum. That means the fight over transgender rights in Maine will play out simultaneously on two tracks: the Senate race, where both Democratic candidates have now staked out firm positions in defense of transgender youth, and the referendum. How both play out could reshape the political calculus around transgender issues for Democrats nationwide.
It has been a joy to deconstruct my religious trauma alongside 32-year-old comedian Taylor Tomlinson. Four years ago, as I was coming out as queer to my family, I found her Netflix special Taylor Tomlinson: Look at You to be a warm welcome into the community of formerly Christian queer kids and purity culture survivors. Dark humor gave all of us a silly sort of grace, a space where we could grieve and grow.
Tomlinson, who was raised in a conservative Christian household in Temecula, Calif., got her start in stand-up through the church comedy circuit. But as she grew up, she began deconstructing how her conservative Christian upbringing was hurting her mental health and sexual development, deciding instead to be a “secular” comic.
Her new Netflix special Prodigal Daughter was filmed inside Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., which welcomed her not despite but rather because of her comedy. On her aptly named “Save Me” tour, Tomlinson builds on a foundation of jokes about toxic Christian culture to call out not just people who weaponize religion as a tool for bigotry but also the people who make fun of those who still believe in God.
“Because if God does exist, he does not exist to make you feel better than other people. He exists to make you better for other people,” she said. “We judge each other’s coping mechanisms. Like, ‘You’re a quitter if you get on antidepressants. You’re stupid if you believe in God. B—-, I’m on mood stabilizers, you’re on Jesus. We’re all trying to get to ‘dead with Daddy.’”
In fact, Tomlinson recognizes the people in her life—her grandparents, aunt, and uncle, himself a pastor—“who are using religion correctly.”
“There are a lot of people who are using religion as a tool for community and connection and compassion and comfort,” she says, “and when I was writing this hour, I was thinking about those people.”
Cheekily, Tomlinson compares her own stand-up specials to her uncle’s Christian services. “We’re both out here on the weekends, changing lives.”
But the comedian is not here to absolve all the sins of Christianity or its effects on her.
“When you grow up in a religious environment, you spend a lot of your young adulthood untangling who you are from who they wanted you to be,” she says. For Tomlinson, this is best represented by her “late” coming out at age 30.
Tomlinson explains that she has so many queer friends who are open and free about their sexualities—the “Samanthas” of the group—but she didn’t see anyone else who, like her, was nervous entering the queer dating scene. “We need more gay prude representation,” she chuckles, making those of us coming out at an older age and experiencing a real queer second adolescence feel less alone.
A second adolescence refers to how many LGBTQ+ people didn’t have the chance to experience the joys of teenage years. Because of rampant queerphobia inside and outside religious communities, we didn’t have access to the romantic and sexual “firsts”—first crush, first kiss, first sexual encounter—that many heterosexual people did because we were told repeatedly that our love and our bodies were shameful and had to be hidden.
While she doesn’t explicitly name “second adolescence,” the significance of coming-of-age as a queer person runs throughout her special.
According to Adam James Cohen, a therapist specializing in helping LGBTQ+ patients, adolescence is critical to developing and cementing a person’s identity and sense of self. For those who missed out on that true identity formation earlier in life, second adolescence offers a mental and physical stage of healing and liberation, often involving people deconstructing their internalized anti-queerness and religious trauma. Sometimes this liberation happens through comedy, sometimes through therapy, or as Tomlinson discusses in her special, sometimes both. During this formational time, adults reckon with the grief of missing adolescence, and make up for lost time.
Second adolescence isn’t just a uniquely queer experience. Many people raised in far-right Chrisitan environments experience a new phase of psychosocial development after they leave their conservative Christian homes. For people raised in purity culture, their second adolescence can be a time of sexual exploration, experimentation, and liberation during and after deconstructing harmful theologies of the body.
For the queer Christian kids like Tomlinson, we were robbed of moments of bodily and social experimentation and generation, so experiencing our second adolescence is like coming home to our bodies, an emotional rebirth or reversion, to put it in Christian terms, of learning and loving to be a queer child and queer teenager again. For trans and nonbinary people undergoing gender affirming medical care, second adolescence can be even more physical, as hormone therapy brings about a second puberty.
And for many of us, this second adolescence is characterized by an eagerness—and joy—to accept and share the possibilities that many never questioned. As Tomlinson joked, “When I started dating women, it was the closest I’d come to feeling religious in a long time because my friend would complain about their boyfriends and husbands and I was like, ‘Have you heard the good news? You don’t have to live like this. There’s a better way.’”
Second adolescence is especially common among people who have a later-in-life realization or acceptance of their LGBTQ+ identity, often called a “queer awakening” or “second coming out,” just like Tomlinson. There is no time limit on coming out or discovering and affirming gender or sexuality, but as Tomlinson jokes in her special, “coming out as bisexual at 30 feels like saying to a waiter, ‘By the way, it’s my birthday.’ They’re like, ‘Cool, sing to yourself. You’re a grown woman.’”
Tomlinson’s special portrays this second adolescence with a humor, grace, and visibility I hadn’t encountered before but am deeply indebted to. Prodigal Daughter, and her comedy as a whole, carries special poignancy for the formerly queer Christian kids coming of age through humor and deconstruction.
